Not All About Me

Text : Matthew 25: 31-46 “When did we see You?”

NOT ALL ABOUT ME.
November 23, 2008
Northminster Presbyterian Church
Roanoke, Va.

“Did you ever have to make up your mind? Pick up on one and leave the other behind? It is not often easy and not often kind, Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Did you ever have to finally decide? Say yes to one and let the other one ride. There are so many changes and tears you must hide. Did you ever have to finally decide? Some of you may recognize those questions that the Loving Spoonfuls used to ask. Of course, we have. All the time. Everyday we make those kinds of decisions. Paper or Plastic? Fast food or salad? CNN or Fox News? Take this product and ignore that one. Hire this person and fire that one. Life is constantly forcing us to make choices. But at the same time, we think having choices is what makes life good. We like having choices. We think it gives us a sense of power, a sense of being in control of our lives. Did you ever have to make up your mind? Certainly, I do it every day all day.
Not only do we have all those choices and decisions but most of the time we make those decisions in our favor. I make most of my decisions based on whether or not it will benefit me. I make them from my perspective. I pick up the one that is best for me. I chose those things that benefit me the most. I think that is pretty cool, but my sisters never thought it was very nice. I cut the pie so that I get the biggest piece and I am very happy, but the rest of you are not very pleased. When my sisters got to make the decisions and made them in their favor, I scream for justice. It was not fair, I yelled.
Virginia does not like it when North Carolina tries to make all the decisions about the use of the water from the Roanoke basin in North Carolina’s favor. Most of your co-workers do not like it when you make most of the decisions at work in your favor when you try to turn up the thermostat. The people in the Middle East are not happy when the U.S. makes all our decisions in their countries on the basis of American self-interest. Yeah we have often had to make up our minds and make decisions. We have made most of those decision on the basis of what is best for me, from self-interest, and yet somehow, somewhere, we realize that somebody else will have settle things a different way. Isn’t that the most common comment you hear when there is all this talk about bailing out Wall Street or bailing out the auto industry? They are not bailing out me. They are not helping me pay my mortgage.
So maybe that is why this story of the Son of Man coming with all the host of heaven, coming as the one who does finally have to decide, coming with the nations of the earth before him, coming to finally have to separate those who are part of the Kingdom of heaven and those who have no interest in that kingdom is such a blessing. Immediately the story forces us beyond where we live most of the time because the story is not just about “just me.” It is not a story about individual salvation. It is not concerned just about getting you or me to heaven. It is a story about all the nations of the earth. It is a cosmic story about the fundamental reality of the kingdom of God. The text underscores the completeness of the Son of Man’s decision in two ways – the Son of Man is surrounded by all the angels in heaven and all the nations of history are before him. The Son of Man is having to finally decide.
The Sheep are divided from the goats. It is not just Christians from Jews, Jews from Muslim, Americans from Iranians. But those who are sheep from every nations are separated from those who are goats in every nation.
Jesus tells us that the separation comes about on the basis of the things that we have done in our ordinary average days. As we went through the routines, the car pools, the junk mail, the emails, the fast food lunches, the quick trips to the grocery stores, the things way we acted form the forks in the road that separated us from others. Which of courses, means that there really is no “ordinary time.” All time is touched by eternal significance. This is Christ the King Sunday in which we bring to an end the 33 Sundays which have been called Sundays of Ordinary time, and on this Sunday we declare there really was no ordinary time, all time is charged and full of the holy and eternal purposes and opportunities.
When the Sheep asked how they got over here, the Son of Man says it was pretty simple. When they saw Him hungry, they fed him. When they saw him naked they clothed him. When they saw him thirsty, they gave him water. When he was sick, they came to help. Ahh, but the real secret is that they did not know it was Jesus. The sheep did not know who they were helping. The Sheep did not know they got brownie points for being good to those who needed help. Those ordinary people who the sheep felt compassion for and helped because those people needed help turned out to be the incarnation of Jesus. The sheep offered their help with no anticipation or understanding that helping those who were in need had any way of helping themselves. Their acts of compassion were not rooted in self-interest. They did not do them as a way of helping themselves. The gift of food, water, clothing, visits, and care were given because there was response of the human heart to a need.
There is a tv ad that is being shown in my community, it is a national ad so perhaps you have seen it. The commercial starts with one person doing an act of kindness for another person, and a third person seeing that act of kindness. Then third person does an act of kindness to a fourth person, and that person does an act of kindness to a fifth person, and all of them do the acts of kindness without there being anyway for them to benefit or to make it pay off for them.
The goats have continued to live out of their own self interest and even when they asked why they were goats, and told that they had not feed the hungry, clothed the naked, given drink to the thirsty, and so they had not shown compassion to the Son of Man, the goats said, “Hey, if we had known it was you and that it mattered we would have been more than happy to feed, cloth and visit the sick.”
Those who are welcomed into the kingdom of God are those who have discovered that great joy of compassion for those God loves and who live out of that compassion instead of living out of their own selfishness. Marcus Borg, a New Testament scholar of national reputation, says that we follow Jesus when our passion, our love of God, is so great that we forget ourselves in God’s passion for those things God loves, the world. Those who find themselves in the kingdom of God are those who find a way of forgetting about self and what is best for them and find a way to live and enjoy life for the good of all. The Kingdom of God is available and visible wherever we find that we are able to pick up the needs and the concerns and the opportunities for all creation and leave behind that constant temptation to make our decision on the basis of what is best just for me. The Kingdom of God is enjoyed and visible now and always in the times when we become caught up in the delights, in the pains, in the work, in the struggles for justice for others that we forget all about whether the decisions we make are beneficial to our self interest or not. We see some sheep begin to gather when right after a tornado people begin to show up to help the victims collect their belongs.
Isn’t that what Jesus says in other places about those who would follow him must be willing to lose their lives so that they may gain their lives. The Son of Man comes to finally decided and we are shown again that the finally decision is given to those who get so involved in the ordinary lives of the ordinary people in the ordinary days that they forget about protecting their own self interest and become full of the joy of sharing that life with others.
Which brings us to this table. Which is why this table is so central to what we believe about life, about God, about salvation, about love. It is the table where we remember that the one who comes as the Son of Man and who welcomes into his kingdom those who triumph over their own selfishness, is, in fact, the one who put aside his own self-interest, but did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but gave it up so that He might assume the nature of a human being, a slave, and bearing that likeness of humanity, he humbled himself and in obedience accepted even death –death on the cross. The Kingdom of God comes to those who make their decisions out of compassion for others, and not just the others in our own family, and offers to them the same importance they once thought of themselves. This is a table which celebrates the kingdom that is created by those who can finally decide not to live out of their own agendas and their own personal wishes, but who live out of God’s compassion for all creation.
Come now to the joyful feast of the people of God.

That's it!

A good friend of mine sent me one of those emails that gets sent to everybody. He had sent it to me and said that he could not wait to get my reactions to it. I think that question was what made me think about this more. It began with a marvelous, warm, tender story about love, friendship, hope, and compassion. It was a delightful story. I was charmed to tears by the tenderness of the story. I was most grateful to him for sending me the story.
But then came the second part. It was a long list of instructions of things I was supposed to do if the story had moved me. I was supposed to immediately send it to ten of my best friends. If I did not send it, I was being ashamed of God and afraid to bear witness in pubic. I cannot here remember all the instructions that were suggested, but I did not do any of them.
So I thought about my reactions to that email. I realized I did not like being manipulated. I did not like being told what I had to do with a gift. The story was a great gift from my friend, but it was not really a gift, because, he, or the first sender, felt enough in charge of the gift to be able to tell me what to do with it. If it were truly a gift, then I could do whatever I wanted to do with it. But it was gift in disguise. It was really a trap. The email was sent to push me into a corner and make me feel guilty if I did not send it on and to make me ashamed or proud of myself if I did send it on.
Unfortunately for all of us in the Christian community too much of our efforts to share the great story of God's love is given in the same way that the email is given. When we talk about God's gift of grace, we try to use that as the means to make people do certain things. Give more, vote in certain ways, no dancing, believe certain things. I loved the story, but I will refuse to let the one who gives it to me tell me how to react to grace. That is it. That is why I do not like those emails.

Christmas Shopping in July

The email from a close friend said that they used to scorn those who spent so much time in June, July, and August doing their Christmas shopping. My friend said that he looked around in the middle of October and already had all of his shopping done. He said it was funny how life pulls yours strings.
For me the act of having Christmas stuff in the stores before Thanksgiving has always been an exploitation of the Christmas meaning. Thanksgiving is a holiday which is supposed to remind you to be happy and thankful for what you already have. Christmas is now supposed to be the season where you suddenly have to be unhappy with what you already have so that you can make a list of all the things you just have to have. So Thanksgiving, except for the food industry, is not a big marketing season. So we can forget Thanksgiving and start to push the sales by the first of November.
This year the Christmas season skipped over Halloween as well. Christmas stuff in the stores in October. There is a potential bright side of this for the Christian community. The more and more they move the commerical Christmas marketing season away from the time of the Christmas celebration within the worshipping community the easier it may become for Christian people to teach their children the differences between Santa and Jesus. The longer the marketing and the more disconnected it becomes from the Christmas day within the Church, the more chance the believing community has for separating the commericalization of Christmas from the holy day of the faith community.
It was a couple of years ago when a Muslim student in the Duke University newspaper marveled at what the Christian community had allowed to happen to its high holy day. She said Look at what they have done to your story, look at how they exploit the Christ, look at how awful they manipulate the message. We Muslims would never allow that happen to our holy days. And judging from the reaction to some cartoons, they do not take kindly to people messing with their Prophet.
But it may just be one of those hopeful acts of providence, that the marketing people will so try to expand the marketing time to exploit Christmas that they will get it started so early that it loses all connection with Christmas and Christian community can have its holy time back again.
So we can pray.

Providence?

The old hymn reminds us that God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. Isaiah the Prophet reminds us that God's ways are not our ways. The magnificent black preacher Gardner Taylor once commented that God had used the Second World War to prepare the black community for the Civil Rights movement. He argued that the government had taken thousands of black young men and trained them. The government had sent them to foreign lands where they could and experience all kinds of different things. The government had put them in leadership roles in the army. The government had paid for their education upon return. As a result the black community had a great body of black leadership ready to step forward in the Civil Rights movement. Dr. Taylor's faith perspective gave credit to the moving hand of God's providence in that history.

With the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States, one might suggest that the Providence of God was at work in this country over the last eight years preparing us for this incredible moment. I am one of those who had come to the place where I did not care who the Republican nominee was, I was going to vote for the Democrat because the Republican Party in power for six years had ruined our country. They had abandoned their own principles. They had arrogance in their power. They had irresponsibility in their leadership. They seemed to be concerned only about the prosperity of the rich. There are many observers who suggest that I am not alone. That there were many people who had come to the place where they recognized that the party in power needed to be removed. That those six years of suffering as a nation prepared us for a major change and into that opportunity Obama came. It is a major and dramatic change that has already happened in his election. There is a new reality that cannot be reversed. It has happened.

Like Dr. Taylor from my faith perspective I celebrate that Providence of God at work in our history to bring us to this point and to give us this new beginning and this new reality. There is an old affirmation that God can make a way where there is no way. There were many who said that the election of a minority candidate for President of this country was a "no way, jose." I rejoice in my faith perspective that celebrates that God has made a way. Perhaps that is part of cross and resurrection of God, that we had the cross of the pain and suffering as a people to prepare for this day of new life? It is my reading of the Bible that it is how God works to bring about new creations. So rejoice. This is the day that the Lord has brought.

Depressing

There was a story of the Embarqmail Home page. The story says that The Crystal Cathedral and Robert H. Schuller have relieved the Rev. Robert A. Schuller of his duties as preacher at the Cathedral. The Elder Schuller had placed the mantle of authority on his son in an emotional service in 2006. Now in a written statement from the President of the corporation of the church the two Schullers had different visions of what the ministry was to be and how the ministry should be conducted.

There were two thoughts that came to mind: One, that God seldom calls families to preach. One of the great Old Testament leaders, Samuel, whose children turned out to be failures. It does not appear that any of the disciples had children who became leaders in the church. At least, I know of none. Martin Luther, John Calvin, do not seemed to have had children who followed or lived up to their father's place in the church. Franklin Graham is no Billy Graham. Joel Osteen is the son of a successful preacher, but Joel's father was a powerful pentecostal evangelical preacher and Joel is a long way from his father. David Buttrick is not the preacher that George Buttrick was. The list could be expanded. Robert A. Schuller is not the entertainer or motivational speaker that his father was. Actually the few times I hear the son, he had a lot more Christianity in him than his father.

The second fact was where this story was reported. It was reported in the Entertainment section of the news. What a sad and disappointing reality! The preaching of the Christian faith in the Crystal Cathedral is considered simply entertainment. Surely the presentation of the Christian faith has to be something more and different than entertainment where the events of the life of Britney Spears are reported. Perhaps that is what was eventually wrong with the Crystal Cathedral: the father was a better entertainer than his son and the ratings dropped. The church is not called to be a place of entertainment.

He came to bring a sword, to lite a fire, to cause a division of the house.

What is normal?

She sells real estate on the coast of North Carolina. When asked how things were selling now in the midst of the "credit crisis," she said that things were back to normal. Things were now back to the way they were when she started the business. Things were back to the times when the customer had to have some money to put down. Things were back to where they had to run credit checks and the buyer had to have good credit to get a loan. Things were back, she said, to the way the business used to be.

She made me realize how much of a fantasy world we have been living in. The dream of everybody getting rich in real estate, the dream of Social Security investments in the market that would just keep getting larger and larger, the dream that all of our problems would be solved by capitalism were just that dreams and illusions. I am not happy losing a third of my value in my investments. But as one who has made a life of trying to live by the stories in the Bible, I must confess that I am not surprised by the greed that has consumed us. The man who was working out with me in the Y said he used to believe that his broker at least had an interest in seeing that his clients made money as well as himself. Now he is not sure. Speculators, hedge funds, investment rating firms, CEO's with amazing salaries, million dollar bonsuses, all suggest that greed was working overtime. But the sin of greed was in all of us. The Christian story is such that we are never surprised by the presence of evil in all of us.

The other thing that the real estate salesperson's remarks did for me was to make me terribly thankful for the things I do have, for the life I have had, for the fact that what I have is paid for, for the fact that the normal life was always good enough. Even now in the midst of the world wide economic challenges when we look around at the world around us, it takes a lot of gall to complain. We have so many blessings that we take for granted that we do not even acknowledge. We just keep forgetting what "normal" is.

From the other side

For forty years every three years there would come a time when I had to read the story Jesus told about the farmer who hired day laborers. Once every three years the story would come up in the list of scriptures to read on Sunday. This is the story of the farmer who went early in the morning to the place where day workers gather and hired the people who were there. When he hired them they agreed on the price he would pay them for the day's work. He took them to the farm and put them to work. Then about noon, he had to go back to town so he dropped by the place and saw some more people, and he hired them. Turns out he was back in town about three o'clock and he rounded up the workers who had gathered there in the afternoon. When the end of the day came, and the farmer paid off the workers, he called out the last ones hired and he gave them the pay that he had agreed to pay the workers he hired in the morning. He gave those who were hired last the same pay.
Those who had worked all day were upset and angry that they did not get paid more if they had worked more. But they got paid what they had agreed was a good pay for a day's work.
This is a hard story for those who want life to be fair. It rubs against our sense of justice and equity. Fairness is not present in this story. But for the forty years I have worked with this story, I have never met a person who read this story from the point of view of the person who got hired last. Everybody who has discussed this story with me took the position of those who had worked hard all day, and they were outraged.
Nobody has thought about the hard working people who cannot find work. Those who show up at the day labor site every morning hoping to get picked up for a day's pay. Nobody has imagined what it must be like to have a family and children and worry every morning whether there would be somebody looking for workers so that you might make enough to buy food for the day. Nobody I have ever taught this story too thought about what it must have been like for those who had not been picked or who had not been able to get to the place on time. Maybe somebody was sick at home and the worker had not been able to get out of the house by early morning. Maybe there were other complications. The best they could do was to get there by mid-day and worry about missing a whole day. Where would they get the money for supper? Then they get hired by the farmer to work. At least, they think they will get a little something. Maybe enough for bread and milk. Then he pays them the whole day's pay. What a delight. What a surprise. What a wondering thing. They were going to be able to take food home tonight. They did not have to go home and be a failure at home for not getting work. They had been given a blessing.
After all most of us have not worked for all the blessings we have gotten. We have worked the last few hours on major projects and gathered the great benefits. We have not put in the sweat and labor to develop the internet, but we get the full benefit of it. We have not produced the food, but we get the full array of products we can choose from. Most of us get more than we deserve and are treated better than we have earned. There is something terribly wrong with the Christian church that has nobody in its midst that rejoices at the hearing of this story. For we are all the ones who have come to the work late and get the full benefit of the master.